Ugh. I was doing better with the baby stuff. Over the weekend, Kevin took her for two nights while I slept in a different room -- the first night, I slept six solid hours, which made me feel slightly less dead, and the second night, I slept ten (!) hours. I felt like myself again afterwards for two whole days. By Monday, was starting to get a bit tired again, but I really was doing basically okay until last night. When she decided around 3 a.m. that she would only sleep if mommy snuggled her tight. And would still flail a lot. And squawk occasionally. Meaning that I dozed for the last four hours of the night, before finally giving up and making Kevin take her when I got up to pump. (Kevin immediately demanded the swaddler blanket, which clever thought probably should have occurred to me at 3 a.m. but, you know, didn't. Kavi appears to now be sleeping like a baby. Ha ha ha. It is to laugh, or maybe cry.
It's particularly irritating because we're having friends over for dinner tonight, and the last time we tried that, I was so exhausted that I couldn't enjoy their company nearly as much as I normally do (or be the sparkling witty conversationalist that my friends know and love). I really don't want to do that again tonight, because I see this particular set of folks all too rarely. (Pireeni and Colm, Minal, Leah, along with Jed and Kevin). I may have to use some of my babysitting time to nap, instead of writing, this afternoon. Argh.
Otherwise, the week really is going fine. A bit behind on Tamil homework, but hoping to catch up over the weekend. We can now put together fairly complicated sentences, with adjectives and adverbs and participles and such. Of course, we only know seven adjectives and not so many more nouns. So there's a lot of 'good dog' and 'bad baby' in there. And I've managed to write both Tues (courtesy babysitting) and Wed (courtesy Jed's company), and have almost finished completely revising the first section of the YA book. Exciting, although a bit nerve-wracking too, as that means I'm almost ready to launch into drafting the new next section...
I feel I should note that I had a minor meltdown on Tues night, freaking out at poor Kevin that I have no time to write. What with coming home from class and pumping, my T/Th babysitting afternoons at best give me three hours writing time each, which is just not so much. We're going to try to regularly have Kevin take her Wed nights so I can go out and write some more then. And maybe Sat/Sun mornings will become dedicated writing times too, if we can get the grandparents to cooperate with babysitting. We'll see. In theory I ought to be able to write in non-dedicated times, but I am having a VERY HARD TIME with it. Maybe I am just not disciplined enough. I think that a lot. :-(
Okay, starving, must eat. And drink tea. I foresee in my future today lots and lots and lots of tea.
Once you stop pumping, life will get a little easier. Accept that this is a busy time and do what you can in the time you have. No point setting high expectations or behaving as though your life is still the same – it isn’t.
Sorry to be so frank but this is something I tell myself every day over and over again until my subconscious finally gets it.